erom deen I
by Starriecat
Summary: Sakura thinks she doesn't need anything else but Naruto. She only hopes she can be enough for him, who still does. SasuNaru, one-sided NaruSaku.


Disclaimer: Own not Naruto.

A/N: Title comes a line from Utada Hikaru's 'Passion', which reversed is 'I need more'.

* * *

Sasuke's apartment is still the same when Naruto sets foot into it; the last part of his hometown he explores again like an old friend when he's back from his visit--with some fear and some very stupid and very short-lived hope that maybe there would be some new footprints in the layered dust on the floor. (After all, Sasuke has definitely not abandoned his first, dead, family if he's abandoned everything else.) 

But the air remains dank and choking as it always has, so choking it could break his lungs, and Naruto doesn't linger there long.

Shutting the door with a sigh that sounds just a tad too tired to belong to the same boy who came there years ago, he turns. Re-emerges into the bright light that is Konoha from the window he entered and left years ago in Sasuke's guise in hopeful foolish attempts to win a certain pink-haired damsel's affections. Funny, leaving Sakura wasn't really a valid reason in his calculations to stay in Konoha three years ago. Swallowing the rising feeling in his gut that Sasuke felt exactly the same about him, he shook his head wildly and stared forward, with that same old stubbornness burning in his eyes≈probably just childish denial.

But Naruto is, after all, only fifteen years old and still not yet awoken in this world. And so he is allowed some of these things to hold onto. Anyway, its just stupid to try to tear the sleeping away from their dreams, and most of his friends in Konoha have given up trying. When Sasuke has his vengeance and doesn't return to Naruto's desperately open, flailing arms┘that's they'll let him wake up. For now, they'll let him dream a little longer...even if it is only a dream. And even if its maybe a little cruel.

But there's just nothing else they can do. He'll never give up otherwise, they know; not until the day he dies.

In some strange ways, Naruto and Sasuke are more similar to each other than anyone at this moment; still so hung up on the past, so unable to let go of things everyone thinks they should've long ago. True; only one of their dream's involves the other, while that other has already forgotten everything he needs and is still stupidly clinging onto the one thing he wants, which won't get him anything in the end. But maybe they're both alike in that respect.

--

Years later, Sakura's peers out the top of a windowsill, crouched on the floor. She's silently watching as the Sound tear down all the planks of Sasuke's house...silently watching as they search for a scarred headband so dry it can't even speak the secrets it once knew, and she chokes back words. Its so pointless.

Even when both of them are torn apart from each other, they still have such a strong connection and so many things alike its scary. They have a thing that'll never fade; even when Naruto has finally let go of it and achieved his ambition of Hokage and shoved Sasuke firmly from his mind; even when that night still cuts him so deep┘that night when Itachi dueled the Kyuubi out of Naruto, that same night when Sasuke killed Itachi, gave the briefest flickers of glances towards Naruto and said it didn't mean a thing; the same night when Naruto tore off his headband, turned away and said "Forget it"; hands shaking so hard she could cry to remember it--

Sakura chokes and swallows; turns away from the window as they finally leave, white shoulders shaking as she clutches a scarred headband in the dark beneath the windowsill and presses the cold metal to her lips, too dry to share its secrets even now. With shaking hands, she closes her eyes, and starts as she feels a hand touch her shoulder and then clasp that same hand≈with a strength that she's never quite found the same in anyone else. That certainty in his burning eyes when he turns his head and meets her eyes, muttering in that way that makes her believe him like no one else can.

And she smiles, a single brief spill of water down her cheeks in silence to squeeze them away, because he was there the whole time. And he'll always be.

That's the kind of guy she needs; the kind of guy Sasuke could never be, she knows. And in a way, it hurts, but not nearly as much as she knows it must for Naruto, because when she clenches his hand, and he flinches, then closes his eyes and smiles so warmly, an almost sad chuckle breaking over his face like "I know, its stupid"; he's such a man now, more than Sasuke could ever be, and she thinks she doesn't need anything else.

She only hopes she can be enough for Naruto, who still does.


End file.
